Alchin David, McLean Loyola, Korner Anthony
Westmead Psychotherapy Program for Complex Traumatic Disorders, Cumberland Hospital, Australia.
Brain and Mind Centre, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Australia.
Australas Psychiatry. 2020 Oct;28(5):521-523. doi: 10.1177/1039856220936142. Epub 2020 Jul 28.
As the world struggles to come to terms with "corona," we find our collective experience to be entirely alien, struggling to find meaning in the forms of feeling being evoked. When words cannot provide meaning to experience, metaphor is often utilized.
Words like "love" are informed autobiographically as "growing words," with no rules defining their use. The significance of "love" to an individual is created through personal history, such that sophisticated understanding is only constructed following a lifetime of experience. "Corona" is perhaps a growing word; we cannot yet grasp its meaning in the face of (passion) and (suffering) informing our collective traumatic script. Psychiatrists should aim to focus on the positive forms of feeling emerging during the pandemic, in order to be better equipped to meet the impending "second wave" of mental health complications.
